


With A Wisp Of Smoke

by kj_is_a_girls_name



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, One Shot, smoke alarms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kj_is_a_girls_name/pseuds/kj_is_a_girls_name
Summary: John enjoys his sleep, particularly when it's one of those rare nights when he isn't having a night terror. What he doesn't enjoy? Being woken before the sun by his infernal flatmate, Sherlock, and- what is that annoyingly piercing beeping noise?





	With A Wisp Of Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! This is the first fic I've ever posted, so I really hope anyone who reads it enjoys it. Warning - minor depictions of war and survivor's guilt in the beginning, but after that, it's all silly fluff. Have fun! Comments, criticisms, and kudos are all adored and cherished.

John decided right then and there that he would like to murder a certain man. Not that he hadn’t killed before- there was the cabbie he had shot just a day after meeting Sherlock in order to save his life. John felt a scary little amount of remorse for that- the action wasn’t even difficult, an aim, a twitch of a finger. Elementary, really. And the man, of course, wasn’t a very nice man. There was always that. So no, John had no pity for him or horror at what he had accomplished that night.

And before that, even, there was Afghanistan. Doctors, despite what many civilians seem to think, don’t sit in clean white hospitals, twiddling their thumbs until someone brings them a body to fix. Not during wartime. Not when there are men dying on the battlefield, not when gunshots are akin to both lullabies and goodbyes, wrapped up in one fatal, high-speed projectile. No, war doctors are there, in the middle of it all, going from comrade to friend to soldier, saving some, never all, and he’d be damned if doctors didn’t carry guns. They did. And they shot to kill.

So he had killed people in Afghanistan. The enemy was not something he cared about- after all, doctors shot to defend, not to attack. Offense was not his forte. But too many times he dreamt of all his brothers-in-arms, the ones he sewed back together as they lay, too tired of life to even cry from pain as he helped them live. And the ones beyond help, the ones he couldn’t do anything for (though he would’ve given next to anything to heal them), these were the ones he had nightmares about. Loud, sobbing, soul-wrenching nightmares. It took him two years of therapy and he still wasn’t completely sure that no, John, you did not kill them. There was nothing nothing nothing you could have done. They were already gone by the time you arrived.

He killed the cabbie, he killed Her Majesty’s enemies, and he (inadvertently, perhaps, through neglect or lack of anticipation) killed his companions. Those, however, came out of fear self-defense, for the most part.

Right now, he wanted to kill from anger.

And he wanted to kill the man he had killed for, and the one he would do so for again.

“Sherlock,” he growled blearily, “what the hell have you done this time?”

It was far from an abnormal occurrence, waking up to Sherlock’s cursing at three in the morning, coupled with the smell of smoke. What was different was the infernal beeping that went off again, and again, and again, and again, and-

“I thought you took the batteries out of that thing ages ago!”

“Batteries out of what? And any changes are always Mycroft’s fault, you must know that,” he yelled back from...the kitchen, it sounded like, so an experiment gone wrong. Or perhaps right. John could never be sure.

“The smoke alarm, you dolt! It’s...y’know what, I’m going to have to fix it anyways. I won’t even bother explaining where it is. Just give me a minute.”

John groped blindly in the dark for a pair of pants he could throw on over his boxers (which is what he had taken to sleeping in for the past couple of night- since when was London supposed to be thirty-two degrees in mid-April?)

“John, go faster. I don’t have time for you to figure out if those are your sweatpants or pajama bottoms. The lightswitch is two feet two your left, four inches down from your hand. Do hurry. This beeping will probably alert my obnoxious brother in one way or another, and I’d hate for him to pay a visit.”

Hence, why John wanted to murder his flatmate. Usually, he’d be more amiable (not particularly so, but still slightly more) in this kind of situation, as it is a fairly common thing to happen when you live with the one-and-only consulting detective. However, John happened to be having one of the rare nights when his sleep was neither dreamless nor full of fear- instead, it was pleasant. Happy, even. He could still feel the after-effects, though they were quickly fading, and he was less than pleased to have been woken from his slumber. He couldn't even remember what made him feel so at peace with the world. Just that it (or maybe they? Who knows?) did.

“Shut up, you ponce. I’m coming.”

John stumbled his way downstairs, still blurry-eyed from sleep, as the beeps became more and more incessant and so much more piercing to the ear. He winced. “Alright, Sherlock, where is it?”

The kitchen was dark. John frowned. Sherlock usually left the lights on when he was working. He wasn’t super-human, as much as Donovan and Anderson believed otherwise, and he definitely couldn’t see in the dark.

“Over there. On the ceiling. I can’t reach it.”

“Sherlock, why are the lights off?”

“I was testing accuracy of knife throws in different conditions in the flat. You never know when it might come in handy. Stop it John, I can feel your glare from over here. It was an experiment. I never meant to set the rug on fire.”

“How do you set the rug on fire when you’re playing with knives?”

“I wasn’t playing, I was testing. And the lightswitch is two steps forward, a forty-five degree turn, and three feet forward from your right hand.”

John followed the instructions and flipped the light up. He squinted towards the beepings, its characteristic flashing red dot less intimidating now that the rest of his world had been flooded with light. It was far too high up for either of them to reach, even if Sherlock moved a chair from the kitchen and stood on it.

“What do you want me to do?” John asked. “I’m too short to reach it. Obviously I am, if you can’t get to it. Is this another short person joke? If it is, I’m packing my things first thing after I wake up,” John joked, frowning at his watch, “in five hours.”

Sherlock huffed a sigh of frustration and gave his flatmate his best “Lestrade/Anderson/Donavan-your-help-is-not-required-here-if-all-you-are-going-to-do-is-be-an-idiot” look. “It is not a short joke. Though admittedly it would be helpful if you were a couple feet taller. Maybe then you could reach it by yourself.”

“Oi!” said John with mock indignance, all grogginess and anger forgotten. “Watch it.”

Sherlock gave him the same amused look one gives to a pet when observing its antics. “Get on my shoulders.”

“Sorry?”

“I loathe repetition.”

“And yet you’ve said that phrase so many times one would think you thrived on it. Why am I getting on your shoulders?”

And the look intensified. If Sherlock thought that it was supposed to cow him, John would laugh.

“To reach the smoke alarm.”

“Gotcha. So, err...how? I haven’t rode about on a mate’s shoulders since primary school, and I'm pretty sure I weigh more than you.”

“And I, never," he remarked, ignoring his flatmate's last concern. "It’s very simple physics, John.” Sherlock crouched slightly, putting one foot in front of the other to balance himself, bending his knees for stabilization, reaching his arms out behind him to grab on to the legs that were to come. He looked expectantly at John.

“Right. Well, it’s hardly the strangest thing we’ve done, I suppose.”

“Hardly. Come on then, the beeping will wake Mrs. Hudson and she might finally have the sense to throw us out.”

John nodded, grinning, and clambered on to Sherlock’s back, throwing first his right leg around Sherlock’s right shoulder, then doing the same with his left, seating his rear upon the other man’s neck and shifting his weight to balance himself. “Alright, Sherlock?”

“Quite. I’m going to stand up now.”

“Ok. Don’t go too slowly, or you’ll fall over. But don’t go too fast, or I’ll fall over.”

“I’m far from an idiot, John.”

“Right, ok. Go on, then.”

And Sherlock stood up. To his credit, John mused, it went a lot better than he expected it to.

“Sherlock! You’re falling! Don’t drop me!”

“Well, if you stopped pulling my hair-”

“I’m barely touching your hair!”

“I’d be surprised if I had any left after this.”

“You aren’t making this any easier.”

“You aren’t the one carrying a thirteen stone ex-military man on your shoulders.”

“Oi! Twelve and a half!”

“No, no, definitely thirteen.”

“Shut up.”

“Stop pulling my hair, then!”

“Fine.” John dropped his hands. “Better?”

“Now that I’m not being tortured? Yes, much.” John could practically feel the smirk behind his words as they wobbled, trying to catch enough balance to take the batteries out.

beep beep beep beep beep be-

“There we go,” John said, satisfied. “Now if you could let me down...I supposed this is the most difficult par-”

“Oh!” came the surprised gasp from the doorway. John got perhaps a couple of milliseconds to glance over and see Mrs. Hudson in all her sleepwear glory- fluffy pink bathrobe, slippers, even the classic hair curlers (really, that stereotypical? Hair curlers?) before Sherlock, startled, turned towards the noise and promptly tripped over his own foot. This sent them both tumbling to the ground, John head over heals as he fell from his friend’s shoulders, landing with a loud ‘oomph” onto something warm and soft but also hard and bony and oh my god Sherlock didn’t break anything did he?

“Sherlock! Sherlock, you alright there?”

“Fine. It’ll take more than a baker’s dozen stones to hurt me.”

“Rude.”

“I’m just...I heard the fire alarm...I’ll be leaving now,” Mrs. Hudson stammered. John couldn’t be sure why- had the woman even in it in her to be flustered? She was almost as bad as Sherlock in that regard. What could she have possibly seen that…

Oh. John turned his head down to inspect Sherlock for any injuries, and oh, they were close. Millimeters, really. Barely any space at all. He could feel Sherlock’s heartbeat through his chest, fast and insistent. Since when did his flatmate feel so...warm? John had always assumed he was a sort of stone; hard, unfeeling, cold to the touch. But no- while his abdominals, where John’s left arm and shoulder were currently entangled, definitely had hard muscle (from running around London, chasing criminals every other night, no doubt) he was anything but cold (though he seemed to be just as frozen as John was, in that moment.)

What was it Sherlock had taunted The Woman with? Those signs of attraction he mentioned? Elevated heartbeat, dilated pupils? Sherlock definitely had both of those, and fifteen seconds ago John would’ve assumed that it would have been nothing but the shock and adrenaline of tripping and falling, a miniature version of a post-case reaction. Now...he knew the look of interest in a man’s eye (sue him- he had experimented overseas and enjoyed what he found), and Sherlock’s face, with his pupils practically blacking out his iris and his heart like a hummingbird’s, was full of it. Which led John to realize that that man, underneath him right then, was attracted to someone. Very attracted. And that someone was him.

And, with a start, he realized that he, too, was attracted to his flatmate. How utterly unprecedented.

“Are you planning on getting off of me anytime soon, thirteen-stone?” Sherlock grumbled, then frowned, hearing the breathy and low tone in his own voice.

John grinned. “I don’t think so. It’s not high on my list of priorities.” He lifted himself so he was over Sherlock, the awkwardness of the fall gone. “I have one thing I would like to do, though,” he smirked, dropping his voice an octave. He pressed his forehead to Sherlock’s. “If you’re interested.”

“Tease,” he replied, though his frown was gone now.

John laughed and closed the short distance between their lips.

And perhaps this was what his dream had been about, for he had never felt more at home, safer, or more accepted than he did at that moment, kissing the bloody brilliant definitely-not-a-sociopath that was currently perhaps a bit more than a flatmate.


End file.
